[Sighfis-l] Irene Farkas-Conn passes

[Richard Hill]

Word was recently received of the passing of Irene Farkas-Conn.  Irene was a
long time member of ASIST, from the days when it was ADI, The American
Documentation Institute.  She served on numerous committees, including
Nominations, International Relations, and Publications.  In 1977 she won the
Watson Davis Award for service to the society.

 

In 1990 she published "From Documentation to Information Science: The
Beginnings and Early Development of the American Documentation
Institute-American Society for Informati0on Science, which we received
permission to digitize and is available here:
http://adi-asist.accessinn.com/

 

>From the Washington Post, with one presumed correction at the end:

 

FARKAS - CONN IRENE FARKAS-CONN, Ph.D. (Age 89) A Hungarian refugee who
helped thousands of fellow Hungarian Jews escape from the Holocaust in a
self-rescue operation and later became a leading figure in information
science in the United States, died October 11, 2016 in Arlington, VA. During
World War II, she and members of her family used the Glass House, the
Budapest headquarters of the family glass business, to cram more than 3,000
Jews into all available space, using chairs, desktops, stairs, closets, to
shield them from the constant Nazi deportations to death camps. Meantime,
the adjacent Swiss legation issued 7,500 protective passes (Schutzpasse) and
as deportations accelerated, a second batch of 7,500 passes. But then the
Swiss stopped issuing passes. With increasing pressure of deportations,
volunteers and Jewish Glass House employees began working around the clock
forging more protective passes. Many people used the passes to escape to
Palestine, the future Israel, then a British mandate. While stories about
the Glass House have emerged, easily accessed on the internet, many are
filled with errors, she said shortly before she died. "There was a strong
tradition in our family that one does the right thing, privately and
quietly. For this reason, neither of my two uncles who were instrumental in
the success of this self-rescue operation, nor my mother, had written
anything about it. Yet this is a story that should be told: of bravery, of
Jews standing up under adversity and organizing an operation in a desperate
attempt to save their people." In 1947, she emigrated to New York, where she
graduated Barnard College, got her Master's degree in chemistry from Bryn
Mawr College in Pennsylvania and later earned her Ph.D. in library science
from the University of Chicago, IL. In 1977, Dr. Farkas-Conn won the
prestigious Watson Davis Award from the American Society for Information
Science (ASIS) "for continuous dedicated service to the membership of ASIS."
She served on numerous ASIS committees as well as on
information-science-related committees of the American Institute of Chemical
Engineers, (AIChE) where her husband, Arthur L. Conn, was a past president.
She also traveled widely on information science projects including trips to
Cuba, China and Iran, as well as to Europe and South America. After Arthur
Conn died in 1995, she married Ira Rosenthal, MD of Chicago. Dr. Farkas-Conn
was a retired management consultant who was also a former adjunct professor
at the University of Chicago Booth Business School. She was a former member
of the boards of several organizations concerned with information
management. She is survived by her daughter, Elizabeth Ortmayer of
Arlington; son, Andrew Farkas, MD of Detroit, MI; stepdaughter, Elizabeth
Magnus, Ph.D. of Beloit, WI; two stepsons, Robert Conn of Winston-Salem, NC
and Alex P. Conn, Ph.D. of Boston, MA, and eight grandchildren, Abigail
Ortmayer and Torin Ortmayer of VA, Jonathan Farkas of NY, Nissim Lieb Farkas
and Raizel Leah Farkas of Edison, NJ, Naomi Magnus of Madison, WI, Julia
Conn Espitia of Chester, NJ and Nina Conn of Boston, MA. Her funeral was
held on May [RH: October] 13, 2016 in Arlington.

 

 

Richard B. Hill

Executive Director

ASIS&T

8555 16th Street, Suite 850

Silver Spring, MD  20910

v. (301) 495-0900

f. (301) 495-0810

 

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